BLUE TSUNAMI

Muslims in the U.S. are more politically engaged than ever, study finds

Muslim Americans are more politically engaged and registered to vote in 2020 than ever before, a report published last week says.

  

© Provided by NBC News

According to a poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, 78 percent of eligible Muslim voters in the United States are registered to cast their ballots this year, compared with just 60 percent who were registered in 2016.

“Muslim Americans have become so politicized,” the institute's research director, Dalia Mogahed, told NBC Asian America. “They command way more attention than their numbers would suggest makes any sense. They’re 1 percent of the population, yet talked about, discussed, scapegoated so often. So it's really important that if they're going to be talked about that they also have a voice, that they also have a place at the table.”

After President Donald Trump took office, Muslim American satisfaction with the U.S. took a sharp decline. Since 2018, it has more or less plateaued, and since last year, it has begun to climb slightly.

The study showed that Muslim American support for President Donald Trump has also climbed by a small margin since 2016, though it is lower than the group’s support for any other candidate, including all Democratic Primary contenders.

Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign and time in office, Trump has made Islamophobic comments, which Mogahed says have alienated Muslim voters.

At a 2015 campaign rally, Trump told a supporter he would look into the country’s “Muslim problem”. Later that year, he made promises to implement a database or “watchlist” to track Muslims in the U.S., and issued a statement calling for the shutdown of Muslim immigration to the U.S. He also falsely claimed he watched thousands of Muslims cheering as the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11. During a debate, he said “Islam hates us.”

The institute recorded a 22 percent drop in Muslim American satisfaction with the country between 2016 and 2017.

In 2017, the first executive order in what is commonly referred to as Trump’s “Muslim Ban” went into effect, banning refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Between 2017 and 2018, Muslim American satisfaction with the U.S. dropped to just 27 percent.

Mogahed says that the Trump administration’s Islamophobic rhetoric and policy is part of what has led Muslims across the country to take more of an interest in politics, and that while rates of satisfaction have gradually increased to 37 percent, race has been a better determinant than religiosity.

According to the study, Muslims who identified as white were just as likely as white Americans in the general public to approve of Trump’s performance as president, while Black Muslims, Asian Muslims and Arab Muslims were shown to support the president at very low rates.

“It just shows that American Muslims aren't immune to having race be a salient factor in how you view the president,” Mogahed said. “Although it's not as stark in the Muslim community, that trend is still there as well.”

Overall, Muslims still face the highest rates of institutional and interpersonal religious discrimination in the country, with 44 percent of respondents reporting discrimination at airports, 33 percent when applying for jobs, and 31 percent in interactions with law enforcement.

After 20 years of studying anti-Muslim sentiment, Mogahed says she sees a pattern: Islamophobia in politics will peak among Republicans during elections seasons — and Democrats will often feed into it in the run-up to wars.

“So what has happened with Trump taking office is there is a partisan divide where ... the Islamophobia among Republicans has increased, but it's almost like a net zero because it is decreasing among Democrats,” she said.

CANADA GREEN BUILDINGS

Design practice: Buildings as a Climate Change Solution

By Chris Magwood 

The focus of green building has long been on reducing impacts… doing “less bad” to the planet and ourselves by shrinking our ecosystem, chemical and climate footprints through conscious design and material selection. But when it comes to our current climate crisis, doing less bad is simply not going to be good enough. The climate science is clear: we collectively need to get to net zero emissions as soon as possible AND remove carbon from the atmosphere in order to meet the targets in the Paris Accord1. The building industry is now tasked with doing “more good” by reducing net emissions to zero and actively contributing to carbon drawdown. 

Fortunately, there is a clear roadmap for the building sector to move from being a leading cause of climate change to becoming a key part of the solution. Unlike many sectors, climate change does not force builders to face an existential crisis because it is possible for buildings to become a climate positive industry.

The starting place on the roadmap is for all designers and builders to understand the nature of the issue. Collectively, we’ve done excellent work to address the operational emissions from buildings and have helped move the bar on better codes and created a proliferation of voluntary systems to achieve near zero emissions from high performing new buildings and renovations.

But operational emissions are only part of the problem. A building that achieves zero emissions during its operation is an important step. The other half of the problem now needs to be addressed: material-related emissions.

By recent estimates, the production of building materials accounts for approximately 21% of all emissions globally. We cannot adequately address climate change through operational improvements alone; we cannot “net zero” our way out of this. The “embodied carbon” side of the equation needs equivalent focus and action. We need to take responsibility for all the emissions we cause through harvesting, manufacturing, transporting and installing building materials because of the sheer scale of these emissions.

Tackling these “material emissions” may be easier than you think. The data and tools available to make carbon-smart materials choices is growing rapidly and the evidence of the emission reductions that can be achieved is encouraging.

In a study I completed in 2019, a small (930 m2) multi-unit residential building was modelled with a range of different materials that are all comparable in terms of code compliance, cost and practicality. Material selection was found to have a remarkably broad range of potential results (See graphic top of page 59).

The model with the worst results was responsible for over 240 kg of emissions per square metre of floor area. There is no way that climate change is going to be adequately addressed if new buildings are adding emissions to the atmosphere at that rate.

Some simple material swapping reduced this carbon footprint by over 60%, getting it down to 90 kgCO2e/m2. This is an excellent example of our ability to do “less bad,” and to do so with minimal effort and no undue cost or scheduling issues.

But we can do better. A model for doing “more good” also emerged from the study. It resulted in no net emissions from its materials, but instead recorded a small amount of net carbon storage. At the end of construction of this building, there would be less CO2 in the atmosphere than before it was built. 

How is it possible for a building to have net carbon storage? To get to the answer, we need to understand a bit about the global carbon cycle. Every year, the earth’s plants draw down billions of tonnes of CO2  from the atmosphere and through photosynthesis absorb carbon and release oxygen. In a natural cycle, the carbon thus stored in plants is released back to the atmosphere when the plants die and decompose or burn. (See graphic next page.)

Builders can interrupt this carbon cycle by taking carbon-rich plant material and locking it up in buildings, preventing its return to the atmosphere for the lifespan of the building. We have been doing this unintentionally for millennia, incorporating wood and other biofibers into buildings. Conventional building practices include a range of widely available and affordable plant-fiber materials, including products like cellulose insulation, wood fiberboard and many kinds of timber products. By combining these carbon-storing materials with other low-emission materials, results like the 11 kg/m2 of net stored CO2  from the MURB study are entirely feasible with no disruption to the design process, supply chain or construction methodologies. 

The use of biogenic materials in buildings can be increased and our carbon positive impact on the climate further improved. There are biogenic material options for every part of a building’s enclosure and finishes. By intentionally choosing appropriate biogenic materials, the amount of net carbon can be amplified so that buildings can actually become a measurable carbon sink on the planet.

The final model in the study (graphic top right) used this approach and was able to offer over 130 kg of net CO2  storage per square metre. None of the materials used in this model are unattainable and all can (and have) met Canadian building code requirements, but many of these are unconventional materials and not currently available through typical supply chains. There is work to be done to make this kind of change, but the result would be a construction industry that actually helps the climate to heal. 

Chris Magwood is  a director at The Endeavour Centre in Peterborough, ON,  which offers two full-time, certificate programs: Sustainable New Construction and Sustainable Renovations and hosts many hands-on workshops annually.

Michael Pace

AUGUST 17, 2020 AT 4:25 PM

Hi Chris, I enjoyed your article and would like to update you on some significant changes related to closed cell spray foam. It is true that spray foam and other insulation types, such as XPS, that use a HFC blowing agent, have high GWP or carbon footprint. The new versions of spray foam that use a HFO blowing agent have a GWP that is approx 80% less than HFC types. In addition, these new versions (BASF WALLTITE CM01) have a GWP that is appprox 50% of the GWP of products percived as being sustainable.
The good news is that HFC blowing agent foams will be banned in Canada as of January 1, 2021 and products that use HFO blowing agents will replace them. Please consider including information about this in future papers and let me know if you would like me to send you some additional information.

Fall Awards issue of SABMag to cover the winning projects of 2020 Canadian Green Building Awards   The nine winning projects of the 13th annual SABMag Canadian Green Building Awards, a program of Sustainable Architecture & Building [SABMag], will be published in the Fall issue. The winners include new and adaptive re-use projects from most regions of the country, and represent some of the best examples of sustainable, high-performance building design in Canada. See the winning projects here.

CANADA

EI commissioners say workers, companies want non-partisan review of system, stat

OTTAWA — The representatives for employers and workers in the employment insurance system say they are deeply concerned that a promised review of the program will be lost in the heat of a minority Parliament.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The shortcomings in EI, flagged for years by experts, have been exposed by the pandemic, including that not every worker is covered, nor can everyone who is covered get benefits when they need them.


The EI system is overseen by a commission that regularly reviews problems and the appeals system, as well as its financing. The commissioners bring the voices of workers and companies to the table, often consulting their constituents and raising concerns with permanent officials.

It is rare for them to speak publicly, but circumstances are different from when the Liberals promised, and failed to deliver, a review of EI during their first mandate.

The EI commissioners say they hope the government launches an independent commission soon to do a thorough review.

"There's a heavy preference for it to be an independent process so it doesn't become a hostage to the political habits and flows in Ottawa," said Pierre Laliberté, the commissioner for workers.

"This is what we're hoping that the government will come up with in short order so that we can finally focus on the issue and not be constantly on our toes."

Judith Andrews, the commissioner for employers, said there is broad agreement from business and labour groups that a review shouldn't be rushed in the middle of a pandemic.

One concern the duo have heard from the employers and labour groups they represent is that a process managed by politicians could be lost to changing priorities, or a snap election.

The government has heard their call in a form of a letter the commissioners, labour and business groups sent to Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough in September, seeking a body with marching orders on issues to explore and a deadline to provide recommendations.

The government is now vowing to modernize the EI system, which turned 80 over the summer. Some technological parts of it rely on programming language introduced in the 1960s.

Andrews said the coming months might be the perfect time to do the review because the government has eased access to EI and boosted benefits as a transitional program until the system is modernized.

There is much to look at in the system, from the eligibility requirements, whether special EI benefits like maternity and parental leave should remain in the employment insurance system or be funded separately, as well as whether the government should kick in its own funding.

Right now, for every $12 of funding, employers pay $7 and employees pay $5. The Liberals have frozen premiums paid by both groups for this year and next.

There are also other questions, such as what do with self-employed workers and those who have underlying health conditions that might make it dangerous for them to return to workplaces.

"We need to have a decent look at all of these things, and not just latch on to something that might seem superficially attractive because we're in the middle of a pandemic," Andrews said.

On Wednesday, the Business Council of Canada, which represents some of the largest employers in the country, asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to start a broad-based review of EI that took into account the needs of workers and employers.

A report from the council said there needed to be a greater emphasis in the system on skills training and helping workers adjust to labour market demands.

Federal officials effectively put large swaths of the EI system in sleep mode in March and April as three million jobs were lost. Officials worried that the decades-old system would crumble under the weight of mounting benefit claims, and that it would take a year to process claims in the usual way.

"If the program that is meant to provide income support during an economic crisis collapses on under the weight of the volume of cases when there is a crisis, well, then you have a problem," Laliberté said.

"All the programs should be prepared for this."

In EI's place was the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

Late last month, the handover back to EI began, with almost 1.7 million recipients moving to the restarted system at last count and claims being processed at a faster pace than before the pandemic.

Some of that had to do with officials processing the approximately seven million records of employment that employers filled out in March and April, which have to be filed when there's a disruption in earnings so workers can access EI.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2020.

Jordan Press, The Canadian Press

N.L. union head 'disgusted' after she says police threatened to arrest workers

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — A union head says she's disgusted after police allegedly threatened to arrest Dominion workers on a picket line outside the Weston Foods bakery Tuesday night near St. John’s.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Unifor local 597 president Carolyn Wrice said about 40 workers were blocking trucks outside the bakery when roughly 20 Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officers arrived.

"It was police everywhere, roads were blocked, it was crazy. And it was a peaceful picket line," Wrice said in an interview Wednesday. "My question is, who initiated this attack ... on the workers? Who initiated this attack on a peaceful picket line?"


Const. James Cadigan said Wednesday the officers were from the "public order unit," which he described as a "highly-trained unit" deployed in situations requiring "de-escalation." He could not confirm how many officers were at the bakery, but said police responded to complaints from small businesses and organizations that were concerned about the disruption.

Dominion workers in Newfoundland and Labrador went on strike in late August after rejecting a contract offer from parent company Loblaws Inc., which included a $1-an-hour pay increase spread over three years. Weston Foods is a subsidiary of George Weston Ltd., which owns Loblaws.

Wrice said workers had been blocking the trucks outside the Weston Foods bakery for two days in an effort to get Loblaws back to the bargaining table. She said police had no right to interfere because Loblaws had not received a court order preventing workers from picketing that location.

The officers threatened to make arrests before the workers left peacefully to demonstrate at a nearby building, Wrice said. The trucks were then able to leave the parking lot.

Cadigan would not confirm if officers threatened to make arrests, but said police spoke to the union leaders on site about the "parameters of the Criminal Code." Blocking a public passageway is a criminal offence, Cadigan said, adding that RNC officers "outlined" that fact to the striking workers Tuesday night.

Cadigan said he was "appreciative" the situation was resolved peacefully and respectfully.

In a news release Wednesday morning, provincial NDP Leader Alison Coffin said the RNC response was "an unnecessary use of force," which put the "right of workers in this province in jeopardy."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2020.

TRUMP WANNABE

Breakenridge: As covid cases rise, Kenney's keep calm and carry on advice is not much of a public health strategy

In relatively short order, Alberta’s daily COVID-19 case counts have jumped from the 100s to the 200s to the 400s and now into the 500s. At this rate, we may even crack the 600 threshold sometime this week.

 

© Provided by Calgary Herald Premier Jason Kenney speaks at the daily COVID-19 update with Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, on March 13, 2020. If the premier wants to avoid a return to severe restrictions, then what's the alternative plan as covid cases rise? asks columnist Rob Breakenridge.

With this rate of doubling, Alberta could be well into quadruple digits before November is through. A prolonged trajectory of that sort of exponential growth would create a rather dire situation for our province.

For now, Premier Jason Kenney is urging Albertans, as he has done several times over the last seven months, to keep calm and carry on. But to follow the logic of the premier’s intended analogy, the resolute citizenry ought to then be able to trust that their elected government is dealing with the crisis.

Keeping calm and carrying on might be reasonable enough advice for folks, but it’s not much of a public health strategy. Rather than laying out a plan to deal with the sharp rise in cases, the premier and his spokespeople are more interested in articulating what they won’t do.

And that has meant a thorough thrashing indeed for the lockdown strawman over the last few weeks. No one is calling for a full lockdown and it’s not a binary choice between that and doing nothing. The premier’s reluctance to force businesses to close or even scale back is understandable, but that should be an incentive to find other solutions to our current predicament.

First of all, while it’s reasonable for the government to prioritize hospitalization numbers above the daily case count, one cannot totally separate the two. A certain percentage of active cases are going to be serious enough to require hospitalization and if the former is rising then the latter inevitably will, too. Greater community spread makes it that much more difficult to keep the virus away from individuals more prone to severe outcomes.

Furthermore, we shouldn’t be so naive as to think that it is only public health measures that negatively impact the economy. Rampant infection can create its own “lockdown” effect, and we’re doing no businesses any favours if we allow active cases to double every few weeks.

So if the premier believes there’s a path to avoiding a worsening of the situation that doesn’t involve any sort of temporary or partial business closures, now would be the time to act.

First and foremost, our test-trace-and-isolate system needs to be beefed up. We are not yet at the premier’s own stated target of 20,000 tests per day, which seems like an immediate and obvious priority. That gives us not only the flexibility to target testing where needed but can hopefully speed up the turnaround time on test results.

That, in turn, aids contact-tracing efforts. But with higher numbers of daily case counts, we’re going to need more boots on the ground when it comes to doing the actual contact-tracing work. One of the concerning trends in recent weeks has been the growing number of cases with unknown origin.

Those efforts would also be bolstered by Alberta finally switching over to the federal COVID Alert app. We were told in August that this transition would occur, but it’s now almost November and we are still waiting.

The 15-person limit on private gatherings announced Monday for Calgary and Edmonton makes sense. But the threshold for a region moving from “watch” to “enhanced” status should be clarified. It’s not clear, for example, why the voluntary restrictions implemented in Edmonton weren’t then applied in Calgary once cases started rising.

It would also go a long way for the premier himself to take the lead on this issue, rather than leaving it to the chief medical officer of health. It’s all well and good for Kenney to point to past successes on the COVID front or to share his thoughts on the impact of various lockdown measures, but none of that is actually helpful in the here and now.

“Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge” airs weekdays 12:30-3:30 p.m. on 770 CHQR rob.breakenridge@corusent.com Twitter: @RobBreakenridge

Advocates call for migrant care worker protections, document alleged pandemic abuses

TORONTO — Migrant care workers are increasingly being exploited during the pandemic, an advocacy group said Wednesday as it called on the federal government to bolster protections for the workers and grant them permanent resident status.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Migrant Rights Network said a growing number of the workers who come from abroad to care for children, the sick and the elderly in employers' homes have reported issues like underpayment of wages, longer work hours and even evictions.


The group -- which has issued a report after surveying more than 200 of the workers -- said some also reported being restricted from leaving their employers' homes over fears of COVID-19.

Migrant care workers -- who are in the country on permits -- have little legal protection when dealing with such issues and need support from Ottawa, the group said.

"Restrictive immigration laws have produced conditions for exploitation and abuse that care workers are facing now and have faced for decades," said Diana Da Silva, an organizer with Caregivers Action Centre, a member of Migrant Rights Network.

"These experiences are not new, but have been further exacerbated during COVID-19," she said.

Some workers have seen their hours of work cut, which prevents them from accumulating the employment hours and pay required to apply for permanent residency, the group said.

"Permanent resident status is the single most important change that would ensure migrant care workers can protect themselves against labour exploitation," the report said.

"(It) immediately gives workers the ability to leave a bad job and make a complaint without fear of reprisals."

Harpreet Kaur, a migrant care worker who came to Canada from India in 2016, said in her first job in Edmonton she worked long hours each day and was paid between $600 and $700 a month. After leaving that job, it took her over a year to find another position that fulfilled strict immigration requirements.

The pandemic has now added another layer of worry, she said, with employers limiting or not permitting trips to get groceries, exercise, or send money home to family.

"During COVID-19 everyone is having a hard time," she said. "Our employers don't want us to go outside because they are scared of COVID."

Karen Sivatra, a migrant worker from the Philippines, said she came to Canada in 2016 to build a better future for her family. She said the long hours she works providing child care have become even longer during the pandemic.

"When COVID-19 happened, the kids were home all the time," she said. "I was working even more, from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. ... but I was paid the same as before. I was exhausted. "

Sivatra said she recently lost her job when her employer decided to move out of the Greater Toronto Area.

If the government granted workers permanent immigration status and changed work permits that are now tied to one employer it would help workers, she said.

"How can we support our families?" she said. "If we only had permanent residency, we could find a job easily."

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not immediately provide comment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published October 28, 2020.

Shawn Jeffords, The Canadian Press

Alberta union leaders launch protest website against Kenney government

EDMONTON — Labour-union leaders are urging Albertans to sign up to protest Premier Jason Kenney’s government through rallies and demonstrations and, if necessary, provincewide general strikes.

Gil McGowan, head of the Alberta Federation of Labour, says Kenney’s United Conservative government is attacking the province's parks, workers, and the public health system.

“We have no choice but to fight Jason Kenney and we’re asking all Albertans to join us,” McGowan said Wednesday at a news conference at an Edmonton hotel.

McGowan was flanked by other union leaders as they launched a website called standuptokenney.ca

The site asks Albertans to promise to take part in protests.

“The premier wants to frame opposition to his government as a battle between the UCP and so-called union bosses and NDP surrogates. But the truth is the UCP has picked fights with an unprecedented number of Alberta groups and individual Albertans regardless of their political stripe.”

Hundreds of health support staff walked out on Monday over the government's plans to cut jobs and privatize some services at hospitals.

The workers returned to their jobs on Tuesday after the Alberta Labour Relations Board deemed their action illegal, but some surgeries had to be cancelled and rescheduled.

McGowan says the one-day protest showed that mass action can be effective.

Kenney’s government was expected to respond later Wednesday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2020.

The Canadian Press

NDP says Alberta government must ‘do more,’ like increasing non-restrictive COVID-19 measures

Alberta's Official Opposition said Tuesday that the provincial government must "do more" as COVID-19 cases continue to climb in Edmonton and Calgary.

© Credit: Alberta NDP NDP Leader Rachel Notley on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020.

There are currently 4,477 active cases in the province; of those, there are 1,549 in the Calgary zone and the Edmonton zone has 2,179.

NDP Leader Rachel Notley outlined six "non-restrictive" measures, including halting the layoffs of 11,000 health-care workers and increasing the number of contact tracers, that the Opposition believes the government should immediately implement to help control the situation in Alberta.

"These are six proactive steps that the government can take today," Notley said.

"They don't need to restrict the lives or livelihoods of Albertans in taking these steps. In fact, they reduce the chance of economic restrictions going further."

Measures the NDP pushed for also include having a faster turnaround time for test results, implementing the national COVID-19 tracing app, introducing a COVID-19 risk index for businesses and setting out a provincial staffing strategy for continuing care facilities.

"The provincial government must do more," Notley said. "We believe that [Premier] Jason Kenney is not living up to his own personal responsibility as premier."

The office of the premier declined to comment on the NDP's demands when asked by Global News Tuesday.

Read more: ‘Alberta, we have a challenge’: 7 deaths, 1,440 cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Alberta since Friday

Notley made the demands at a news conference Tuesday, saying she believes Kenney is "failing to take action that will help keep Alberta's economy open."

Notley said that the 11,000 layoffs planned by the government create "chaos in the hospitals where they work because he is prepping to cut their salaries, eliminate their pensions, and in many cases, fire them."

Those layoffs led to a mass of health-care workers marching across the province Monday, but they are now back to work after the Alberta Labour Relations Board ruled they acted illegally when walking off the job.

Read more: Labour board calls Alberta hospital staff walkout illegal, orders picketers back to work

With faster test results, the NDP wants the government to publicly report wait time estimates and increase the number of contract tracers available in the province.

On Monday, Alberta's chief medical officer of health said the province currently has 800 contract tracers but is working to increase that number.

"AHS is increasing their staffing as quickly as possible, and they are actively recruiting more people to meet these increasing demands," Dr. Deena Hinshaw said.

Read more: AHS actively recruiting more contact tracers as COVID-19 cases in Alberta climb

Notley said she believes contract tracing is key for slowing the spread of the virus.

"Albertans who have not been informed that they've been exposed to somebody with COVID are still walking around, potentially spreading the infection," Notley said.

The NDP said the provincial government also needs to step up and get Albertans access to the national tracing app, which is currently available in eight provinces.

The UCP had said in August the province would be switching over but it has still not launched.

Read more: Alberta will switch over to national coronavirus tracing app

"It is really unacceptable that almost three months have gone by since the Alberta government agreed to adopt this national tracing app... but just can't make it work when eight other provinces already can and already have," Notley said.

Another demand the NDP wants is a COVID-19 risk index to be launched that would tell businesses the level of risk they face while open amid the pandemic.

Notley also called for a provincial staffing strategy for continuing care facilities, saying that outbreaks at these spots could lead to a "collapse in staffing levels" as employees face the risk of getting sick.

Hinshaw said Monday it’s important to find the balance between introducing restrictions that slow the spread of COVID-19 and preventing Albertans from being negatively impacted in other ways.

Also Monday, the province announced it was restricting gathering sizes in Edmonton and Calgary to 15, except for weddings, funerals and structured gathering places like restaurants, theatres and places of worship.

--With files from The Canadian Press and Kirby Bourne, Global News

Alberta NDP asks province to hire 1,300 contact tracers, speed up testing to slow spread of COVID-19

Lauren Boothby 

© Provided by Edmonton Journal NDP Leader Rachel Notley speaks on suggested measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020.

Faster test results and hiring more than 1,300 contact tracers are two of six new measures the NDP wants to see the UCP government introduce to limit the spread of COVID-19, Leader Rachel Notley said Tuesday.

The NDP is also asking the provincial government to make the national COVID-19 contact-tracing app operational in Alberta, create a COVID-19 risk index for businesses to plan relaunch strategies, develop and publish a provincial staffing plan for continuing care facilities, cancel plans to cut 11,000 Alberta Health Services jobs , as well as report the COVID-19 test turnaround times publicly.

Following two consecutive days with more than 500 new COVID-19 cases over the weekend and new mandatory social gathering limits in Edmonton and Calgary, Notley said Alberta’s current trajectory could bring in a more “extreme, limiting scenario” if the government doesn’t act.

“We heard Dr. Hinshaw talk about entering the ‘danger zone’ and crossing what she refers to as the ‘tipping point.’ … We believe that Jason Kenney is not living up to his own personal responsibility as premier, which is to keep Albertans safe, and we worry that he is sleepwalking his way into this second wave of the pandemic,” she said at a Tuesday news conference.

As to whether a provincial mask-wearing mandate is a good idea, she said it’s not necessary yet, although masks are “critically important.”

She said she doesn’t want to see another lockdown and the way to avoid this is to take the pandemic seriously.

“We don’t want to see closures, we don’t want to see jobs impacted. I think that if we had more contact tracers, and if we were able to have faster turnaround on testing, we’d have a better idea of where to take targeted action,” she said.

During question period Tuesday, Notley asked Health Minister Tyler Shandro if he would implement the recommendations. He said, “I suppose their answer is to shout at me to do more of what I’m already doing.”

Shandro said Alberta has the “best testing program in Canada” and the turnaround time is two to four days.

“They called on more contact tracers to be hired. Pre-pandemic we had 50 contact tracers, and now there’s over 800, and we’re hiring more every day.”

As for the risk index for businesses, he said Alberta has the most transparent approach in Canada. He also did not back down from plans to cut 11,000 AHS jobs, the majority of which are non-clinical jobs, although changes will lead to 800 clinical jobs being lost through attrition.

On Monday , chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw introduced new temporary, mandatory measures for Edmonton and Calgary as cases continue to rise.

The measures, which will be re-evaluated in one month, limit social gatherings to a maximum of 15 people where people would be “mixing and mingling,” Hinshaw said. This includes events like parties and receptions. The same limits do not apply to structured events like eating in restaurants, worship services, wedding and funeral ceremonies, conferences and trade shows.

The mandatory rules follow recent voluntary measures including reducing the number of “cohorts” you interact with to three. Cohorts — also called “bubbles” or “circles” — are a small group of people you can interact with regularly without keeping two metres of distance.

The three cohorts include your immediate household, school, and one other social or sports group. People in these cohorts should limit close contact with people outside their cohorts.

There were 422 new cases of COVID-19 reported in Alberta on Tuesday.

LORD BLACK'S MOLL

Friends come and go, but Barbara Amiel can always count on her enemies

TORONTO — You're not really a "somebody" until you've made the titular list of Barbara Amiel's new autobiography "Friends and Enemies."

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Amiel's roundup of perceived allies and adversaries reads like a rollcall of some of the most influential figures across three countries for the past half century.

There are heads of state (U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, friend; former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, enemy); arts and culture heavyweights (Elton John, Oscar de la Renta and Margaret Atwood, friends; Canadian director Barry Avrich, enemy), business titans (Indigo Books chief executive Heather Reisman, friend; Fred Eaton of the Canadian department store dynasty, enemy), and all manner of media personalities (Republican pundit Rush Limbaugh, friend; Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno, enemy).

But what does friendship really mean in the rarefied realm that Amiel occupied as the conservative columnist wife of a newspaper baron, Lady to Lord Conrad Black, who in joining forces became a British-Canadian media power couple?

As it turns out, not much, according to Amiel. She learned that lesson the hard way as hangers-on scurried away from the fallout of the supernova-like explosion of her and Black's lavish lifestyle.

"'Friends' is something that fluctuates throughout your life," Amiel said in a recent phone interview. "You can only divide people really into enemies."

Soon to turn 80, Amiel rehashes her greatest hits of grudge-holding with vicious verve in her recently released memoir tracking her high-wire trajectory from polarizing political journalist, to couture-clad socialite, and finally, self-styled exile of the establishment she and her husband once commanded.

But despite the nearly 600-page tome's vindictive title, Amiel insists the impulse to write "Friends and Enemies" was less about settling scores than an exercise in self-understanding.

"I needed to know who I was," said Amiel. "If you've been through a life of some ups and downs, but haven't accomplished anything substantial, and yet, at the same time have evoked such incredible spite in some people, you realize that your view of yourself must be flawed."

"I think I'm as reliable as it's possible for a human being to be when confronted with what they consider to be the truth about themselves."

That truth, at least in Amiel's telling, is a study in contradictions.

Born into a Jewish family in Hertfordshire, England, Amiel said her adolescent uprooting to Hamilton, Ont., instilled in her a feeling of displacement that stuck with her.

In a sense, her and Black's spectacular ouster from polite society affirmed Amiel's subconscious conviction that she'd always be on the outside looking in at the glittering elite, even as her social calendar and designer wardrobe seemed to suggest she was staring directly into a mirror.

"Seeing oneself as an outsider may be a form of vanity, because everyone sees themselves in a way as an outsider," said Amiel. "You do go through life, not with a chip on your shoulder, but feeling you just don't somehow belong."

At every turn, however, Amiel sought to differentiate herself from the stuffed shirts who dominated Canada's media scene.

She burst into the headlines as a right-wing rebuttal to Gloria Steinem: a raven-haired bombshell, brash as she was bawdy, with an acerbic wit and aptitude for rattling established orthodoxies.

A longtime Maclean's writer and the first female editor to helm the Toronto Sun, Amiel railed against the creep of the feminist progress she seemed to stand for. A three-time divorcee, she has bemoaned growing LGBTQ acceptance as an affront to society's "traditional values." An immigrant to Canada, she has stoked fears that "Canadians — as we know ourselves — may be an endangered people in a few centuries."

Her appetite for the offensive has not dulled over the years. Her book is brimming with outwardly outre takes on issues ranging from the #MeToo movement to the "matriarchy" guiding the investigation into missing and murdered Indigenous women.

In an interview, Amiel asserted that the current "cancel culture" would prohibit such a "civilized exchange of views" without the threat of professional retribution.

But far from being shunned from the mainstream discourse, the release of Amiel's book this month was met with a media frenzy. The most salacious tidbits — bedroom intrigue, high-society badmouthing, her bloodthirsty proclamation that she wants to see her persecutors "guillotined" — have already been mined for tabloid fodder and journalistic lampoonery.

Amiel's media caricature as a status-hungry, man-eating social climber was cemented when she married Black in 1992. But privately, Amiel said she settled into the security of their "non-neurotic love."

"As long as I had Conrad at my side, I could handle the extraordinarily high ozone layer that he took me into, socially speaking," said Amiel. "I didn't think about what it would mean to tumble not into a lower socio-economic sphere, but into disgrace."

With their union came a new set of gilded obligations that Amiel said she felt ill-equipped to uphold — the duties of running a 26,000-square-foot estate, difficulty navigating the mannered milieu of the ladies-who-lunch but barely eat, the pressure to accumulate the requisite regalia to win the approval of the beau monde (a burden exacerbated by Amiel's own spendthrift shopping habits).

But in the end, Amiel said it wasn't her elite excesses that did her in, but the irresistible pull of a punchy turn of phrase.

When she told Vogue magazine in 2002 that her "extravagance knows no bounds," surrounded by closets full of high-priced fashions, Amiel said she was making a self-deprecating joke.

But she said her sense of humour was lost on what she characterizes as the cabal of rivals and lawyers dead-set on dethroning Black from his media company, Hollinger Inc., where he was chief executive and chairman.

"I was there to be mocked. Life was there to be mocked. And I suppose to be shocked, because I just found it funny. I always have, which obviously has not stood me in terribly good stead," said Amiel.

"Once I realized (Black) had done absolutely nothing wrong, I then ... looked to myself, and I thought, I'm the cause of this. It's my flamboyance. It's the way I irritate people."

Amiel doesn't begrudge her high-powered friends for keeping their distance after Black's 2007 convictions on obstruction of justice and fraud, for which he spent more than three years in a Florida federal prison, with Amiel as his dutiful visitor.

The convictions related to what prosecutors called Black's scheme to siphon off millions of dollars from the sale of newspapers owned by Hollinger. Black has always maintained his innocence.

Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump personally phoned Black to announce his full pardon for the conviction.

Amiel credits Trump for seeing through the "corporate governance fad" that she believes drove Black's prosecution, although she concedes Black's personal connection to Trump might have worked in her husband's favour.

But she rejects the notion that Black's glowing biography of the president might have influenced the decision. (Trump receives a special mention among the "supportive high office holders" on Amiel's list.)

"Friends and Enemies" ends on a note of triumphant defiance: "I'm going to try to enjoy the remaining time left to me. And bugger off to the whole lot of you," Amiel writes. "We're still here. You lost."

But if you think Amiel is quietly riding off into the sunset, you have another thing coming.

"Human rights and freedom of speech in Canada is in great peril. I don't think I'll ever be able to stop that fight. It's just I have to find the arena where I can fight it," Amiel said, floating the idea of starting her own online venture.

"Those are the kinds of things that one fights until the grave faces you. And hopefully, you have your lipstick on when the grave faces."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2020.

Adina Bresge, The Canadian Press

'Already struggling' Calgary downtown core will be hit hard by job cuts from Cenovus-Husky merger

EDMONTON — The merger of Cenovus Energy Inc. and Husky Energy Inc., announced Sunday, is going to have a spillover effect into the downtown core of Calgary, where high-rise office space has sat vacant for months and years as the economic downturn and the COVID-19 pandemic have battered the oil and gas industry, clearing out commuter traffic and having a devastating effect on business and culture in the city’s core.

© Provided by National Post

The two companies said Tuesday the merger would result in roughly 2,100 layoffs as Husky joins Cenovus, a $3.8-billion deal that will make Cenovus the third-largest energy company in Canada. It’s not clear what jobs, specifically, might be lost.

“The downtown of Calgary is the goose that lays the golden eggs in terms of the operation of our city and these job losses will hurt in a number of different ways,” said Coun. Evan Woolley, whose ward encompasses half of downtown Calgary.

Tuesday’s news is just the latest blow Calgary in general, and downtown Calgary in particular, has faced. Adam Legge, the president and CEO of the Business Council of Alberta, said the downtown vacancy rate is close to 30 per cent, and any further reduction will mean fewer downtown workers frequenting small businesses such as restaurants and dry cleaners in the city centre.

“Any time we see layoffs of that magnitude, there’s a concern for a whole host of things, including the livelihoods of those affected and what it means for a downtown that is already struggling,” Legge said.

Downtown Calgary, unlike many other large cities, is heavily commercial, with few residential properties. This means, simply, the businesses and organizations downtown rely, in large part, on commuter traffic to put bums in barstools and cash on counters.

“While we started from this incredible high level of downtown commercial activity, it means we had a long way to fall,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said in an interview.

Oilpatch primed for more consolidation in wake of Cenovus-Husky deal

Cenovus, Husky confirm up to 25% headcount reduction as oilpatch layoffs continue

The vacancy’s effects are clear enough, even just looking around. The Plus 15s, the nearly 16 kilometres of pedestrian walkways with 83 bridges that connect buildings in downtown Calgary, are practically deserted.

“What were once bustling networks, particularly in the winter, are quiet,” said Woolley.

In Calgary’s specific case, much of that premiere downtown real estate is — or was — occupied by oil and gas giants.

“To suggest that the oil and gas industry will fill up that vacancy any time soon, or ever, is a faulty assumption. If this isn’t the wakeup call in the sense of the oil and gas industry is not going to save Calgary, then I don’t know what is,” said Dan Harmsen, partner and senior vice-president at Barclay Street Real Estate.

Harmsen said there’s an excess amount of office space in the city that will take years to absorb, but added the situation has led to an attractive rental market, where premium office space can be had for 20 per cent to 40 per cent cheaper than any other city in North America.

Commercial realtors in Calgary have seen some companies outside the oil and gas industry take advantage of lower costs and lease additional space in recent months.

Rachel Notley, the leader of the New Democrats, told the Post that this is a trend that isn’t going to stop, even with COVID recovery or as oil prices rebound.

“As it relates to the downtown of Calgary, just generally, what we need to be doing is looking at ways to diversify the economy and attract other businesses back to Alberta and of course to Calgary,” Notley said. “In terms of job creation, what we need to be understanding then is that we have to look for other eggs to put in our baskets — in fact, we need more baskets, is a better way to put it.”

The layoffs at Cenovus-Husky aren’t even the first in recent weeks.

TC Energy, the company behind the Coastal GasLink pipeline through northern British Columbia, announced an unspecified number of layoffs some weeks ago, followed by Suncor, which said it would shed 2,000 jobs over the next 18 months.

In total, the energy industry dropped 23,600 Canadian jobs in just three months this spring.

The downsizing of Calgary’s energy industry, while it has obviously affected thousands of Calgarians directly, has several other spillover effects; the city itself has lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of downtown vacancies affecting property tax returns. That tax revenue, in turn, needs to be made up elsewhere through, say, residential property taxes.

The lack of commuter traffic affects revenues from parking, or bus tickets and passes, for example. And, obviously, having fewer people in office spaces affects other businesses downtown, whether that’s cultural groups and non-profits or bars and restaurants. There has also been an increase in crime downtown, said Woolley

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© Gavin Young/Postmedia The downtown vacancy rate in Calgary is close to 30 per cent, according to Adam Legge, president and CEO of the Business Council of Alberta.

What is trickier to sort out, though, is the effects more recent layoffs have had because it’s in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most people are already working from home and not travelling downtown for work.

Karen Ball, the interim president and CEO of Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, said there have been effects on volunteerism and the not-for-profit sector because fewer people downtown means that office-based volunteerism and donations — such as the United Way campaigns — are harder to maintain when workers aren’t in the office.

“It’s an unfortunate thing, because, the timing being such, the pandemic has affected everyone in Calgary and certainly in Alberta,” Ball said. “For non-profits it means there’s been an increase in the demands for their services.”

It’s especially acute for the cultural non-profits, most of which are based downtown, she said.

“Of course people working downtown creates a vibrancy 5 to 7 and 7 beyond for bars and restaurants and also live in-person events and so the arts sector is tied to, in some ways, the vitality of the downtown core.”

Still, in spite of the doom and gloom, there are bright spots: On Monday, Suncor announced it would be relocating employees at its branch offices in the Toronto area to Calgary, essentially bringing 700 positions to Calgary.

“Yesterday, Suncor’s leadership spoke with our Downstream employees and let them know that over the course of 2021, we’d be moving our Downstream head office from Mississauga and Oakville to Calgary,” Suncor spokesperson Sneh Seetal said in an email.

Nenshi said that Suncor moving people to the city is good news, evidence of the city’s appealing real-estate market, compared to overheated business markets such as Toronto, something he hopes will bring even more business to the city.

“That’s really the pitch that we’re making to a lot of firms,” said Nenshi.

Woolley, for his part, also remains optimistic: “There is hope, I am a hopeful, optimistic Calgarian, I believe in our city, but it really does speak to the importance of us taking a look at economic diversification,” said Woolley.

With files from Geoffrey Morgan

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